The governor's executive action is in response to the failure of the GOP-majority state legislature to pass the so-called Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act, which would codify discrimination of LGBTQ people by those who oppose marriage equality.

The executive action is in response to the failure of the GOP-majority state legislature to pass the so-called Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act, which would codify discrimination of LGBTQ people by those who oppose marriage equality.

HB 707, sponsored by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Bossier City), would have prohibited the state from taking action against a person, organization, or business if they acted in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction about marriage.

The House Civil Law Committee voted 10-2 Tuesday to effectively kill the bill through a procedural move.

“There’s never a convenient time to stand up for liberty,” Johnson said after the bill’s defeat in committee, according to the New Orleans Advocate. “This issue’s not going away, though.”

As in Indiana and Arkansas, Louisiana faced a backlash against the legislation from LGBTQ advocates and those in the business community who warned the anti-gay policy would be bad for the bottom line.

Stephen Perry, the President and CEO of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the Associated Press that the bill would make the state “complicit in officially state-sanctioned bigotry” and hurt the state’s economy to the tune of $65 million per year.

“We’re attempting to … carve out the ability to discriminate, the ability to be bigoted,” Perry said.

Businesspeople this spring in Indiana urged the Republican-dominated legislature there to vote against a discriminatory religious freedom bill, expressing similar sentiments about the impact of such a policy on the state’s economic health. The bill nevertheless passed, mostly along partisan lines.

Jindal issued a statement after signing the executive order, in which he said that the state should not be able to take adverse action against a person for their belief in so-called traditional marriage.

“That’s why I’m issuing an Executive Order to prevent the state from discriminating against people, charities and family-owned businesses with deeply held religious beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Jindal said. The order will remain valid from now until 60 days after the start of the next legislative session.

Jindal has criticized President Obama for issuing executive orders in response to the inability of Congress to pass legislation. Jindal issued a statement attacking the president’s executive action on immigration as bypassing Congress.

“Granting amnesty by executive order is wrong,” Jindal said of Obama’s immigration policy. “If the President wants to make the case that the law should be changed, he should go make the case to Congress and our people. This is an arrogant, cynical political move by the President, and it’s why so many Americans no longer trust this President to solve the problems we face.”

The executive order in Louisiana prohibits all departments, commissions, boards, agencies, and political subdivisions of the state from taking action against a person who “acts in accordance with his religious belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman.”

Micah Caswell, a spokesman for Equality Louisiana, said in a statement that Jindal was “abusing his executive power” and suggested that the governor cared more about his own presidential aspirations than about the people of Louisiana.

“Gov. Jindal is clearly trying to leave the biggest mess possible, as he readies himself to spend even less time in Louisiana and to launch his presidential campaign,” Caswell said. “In the end, his extreme ideology is only making the state a worse place for those of us who actually plan to live here past his last day in office.”

Jindal, over the past year, has courted the religious right while positioning himself for a possible GOP presidential campaign.

Jindal announced Monday that he is forming an exploratory committee while he considers a possible campaign for the Republican nomination for president, reported the New York Times.

“While other Republican leaders are talking about change, I’ve published detailed plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, rebuild America’s defenses, make America energy independent, and reform education for our nation’s children,” Jindal wrote in an email to supporters.

The religious right is obsessed with the bodies of people who can get pregnant. Indeed, they are so obsessed that Gene Schaerr, a Mormon lawyer in Utah who quit his firm in order to defend “traditional marriage,” submitted an amicus brief before the Supreme Court heard arguments this week on marriage equality. The brief argues that the legalization of same-sex marriage will increase, of all things, abortions.

Schaerr’s brief was first reported by theWashington Post, where Dana Milbank remarked on the absurdity of such an argument. After all, if more cisgender people of the same sex are marrying, there’s little possibility of pregnancy happening within those marriages. But, to a certain kind of religious conservative, this connection makes some—if not perfect—sense.

The argument goes like this: The increase in same-sex marriage supposedly correlates to a decline in the overall marriage rate. Such declines mean an increase in the number of unmarried women. Unmarried women have more abortions than any other group—which is true, but not necessarily because they are unmarried. Therefore, marriage equality will result, in Schaerr’s estimation, nearly one million abortions—a number he seems to have invented out of thin air.

Schaerr’s argument predicates a specific view of sin that is common on the religious right—that all sins, while unique in their expression, are of the same evil. Of course marriage equality creates a decline in marriage rates because it exemplifies a devaluation of the holy and the divine. It is sin, and encouraging its acceptance is the encouragement of debauchery and the embrace of evil.

Abortion, then, is part of the same sin structure that allows for the devaluation of marriage through women marrying women or men marrying men. The religious right sees the acts of individual sin—an abortion here, a same-sex marriage there—as symbolic of the downfall of society as a whole. Therefore the connection between abortion and same-sex marriage are cut from the same cloth—they’re all part of what’s leading society down a slippery slope into an orgiastic fervor of sin and inequity.

The connection between each of these alleged sins is also the way in which they empower a person’s agency over their own body. Reproductive rights, in the form of abortion care and birth control, scare the religious right because they allow people with uteruses control over their own bodily choices and functions. Same-sex marriage, likewise, is read as disobedience to God because, in conservative theology, God created man and woman as binary categories that exist to complement each other.

Having individual rights and individual agency is a position antithetical to the theology of the religious right. Conservative ethicist and theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, said as much in a 1991 essay on abortion: “We Christians do not believe we have inalienable rights. … Christians, to be more specific, do not believe that we have a right to do whatever we want with our bodies.”

To be a member of the religious political and theological right, then, is to commit to a communal understanding of one’s body; it is ultimately not our own to defend and make choices about. Rights language and the concept of individual agency simply don’t have a bearing on the communal religious community as defined by the right.

But such dismissal of rights results in a world in which women are jailed for miscarriages and people wanting to celebrate a lifelong commitment with their beloved are denied happiness. It keeps the status quo, which is exactly what conservatives want.

By invoking abortion—in the religious right’s mind, murder—in an argument about same-sex marriage, Schaerr is making a larger statement about the philosophical approach to rights and autonomy in larger society. That which threatens to tear apart the communal nature of bodies surrendered to God’s will is that which is evil. The reaction here is less about the “yuck factor” of what people of the same sex get up to in the bedroom; it is more about what that ownership of bodily autonomy and rights means for the community of God.

If people are able to marry and experience love with people of their same gender, and this love is considered a right, then, to the religious right, the uniqueness of “God’s design” for heterosexual marriage falls apart. Similarly, if people with uteruses are able to make decisions about when and how they become pregnant, then the specialness of God’s sovereignty over one’s children is threatened. Another person’s autonomy creates problems for the religious right because it highlights how members of the religious communities are persuaded to give up their own rights for the greater good.

And this terrifies the religious right. If people see that they don’t have to give up the rights to their own bodies, that women don’t necessarily have to submit to men to be holy, that equality can actually be a demonstration of God’s love, they might begin to explore those venues for themselves. They might begin to resist the power structure that is the center of the theologically and politically conservative movement.

This is true particularly within Mormonism, a conservative religion akin to the conservative Christian right (indeed, Mormons consider themselves Christians, though Protestant evangelicals do not agree). In conservative Mormonism, where women are still fighting to wear pants to Tabernacle on Sundays, a woman’s role is all the more precarious. Salvation for women, in Mormonism, depends specifically on handing over ownership of one’s faith journey to a husband and the service of family. It is a distinctly white, middle-class theology that demands heterosexual marriage and children to be saved.

In that way, the alliance of ideologies between the Christian and the Mormon right is not surprising. Both form a symbiotic relationship based around the denial of rights and agency to those marginalized by the patriarchy, including women who are sexual minorities. Abortion scaremongering is a natural extension of the denial of rights sought by those who want marriage to be between a man and a woman. It’s all part of a whole culture in which people do not have the right to make their own choices about who they love and what they do with their bodies.

And with the federal legalization of same-sex marriage all but inevitable, the religious right is reaching back into their Santa bag of absurdist theologies and sins to find some way to galvanize the base into action. The fear of those sins that will destroy society is the center of the entire absurdist response. The religious right is scared to let people make their own choices, from reproductive rights to who they marry. And that, ultimately, is their weakness, because fear is unsustainable in the long term. It will fail.

The Obama administration has taken sides in a significant new test case on the separation between church and state, urging the Supreme Court to allow prayers at the beginning of government meetings. The administration lays out its arguments in a newly filed amicus brief in Town of Greece v. Galloway, a case that questions whether the prayer practices at town council meetings of a small town in upstate New York violate the First Amendment. The case could drastically expand the types of legislative prayer practices considered constitutional.

Greece, New York, with its approximately 94,000 residents, has a five-member Town Board that conducts official town business at monthly public meetings. Before 1999, the board opened these meetings with a moment of silence. In 1999, the board’s supervisor changed the practice and started inviting local clergy to offer an opening prayer.

The board lists the prayer in each meeting’s official minutes, but it insists it does not review the language of any prayer before it is delivered nor does it censor any prayer for content. As of 2010, the Town Board had not adopted any written policy governing its selection of prayer-givers or any other aspect of its opening prayer practice; but according to the briefing, as a matter of practice, an employee in the Office of Constituent Services would invite local clergy to deliver opening prayers. Initially, town employee solicited clergy by telephoning all the religious organizations that were listed in the local community guide, which is published by the Greece Chamber of Commerce. The employee later compiled a “Town Board Chaplain” list of individuals who had accepted invitations to give prayers. That employee and her successors would then select guest chaplains by calling individuals on the list approximately a week before each meeting until they found someone willing to deliver a prayer.

Until 2008, the list included only Christian congregations and clergy. Nearly, but not all, of the religious congregations located within petitioner’s borders are Christian. A map introduced into evidence during the lower court proceedings shows one Buddhist temple and one Jehovah’s Witness church located in the town’s borders and several Jewish congregations located just outside of its borders. Nothing in the record indicates that any of those organizations were listed in the community guide. Additionally, from 1999 through 2007, every individual who delivered a prayer at a Town Board meeting was Christian.

The practice was eventually challenged by residents who argued it was a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The lower court disagreed and upheld the practice. But the federal appeals court reversed the decision, holding that when the “totality of the circumstances” of the town’s practice was examined, “the town’s prayer practice must be viewed as an endorsement of a particular religious viewpoint.” In the appellate court’s view, the town’s practice of inviting clergy almost exclusively from places of worship located within its borders “virtually ensured” that “a Christian viewpoint” would be represented by prayer-givers.

In its brief, the Obama administration does more than just defend the historical practice in Congress of opening daily sessions with prayers. It goes one step further to provide a complete embrace of religious-oriented prayers at government meetings, with one caveat. It’s a significant position for the administration to take given the multitude of policy battles it’s embroiled in over its alleged hostility toward religious rights. But much like its negotiations with members of the religious right over contraceptive coverage, the administration takes pains to accommodate religious beliefs and assumes a level of good faith simply not supported in the record. The administration argued in its brief:

Where, as here, legislative prayers neither proselytize nor denigrate any faith, the inclusion of Christian references alone does not constitute an impermissible advancement or establishment of religion. So long as the goal of the government-backed prayer is not to recruit believers or criticize a given faith then the practice should be supported. Neither federal courts nor legislative bodies are well suited to police the content of such prayers, and this Court has consistently disapproved of government interference in dictating the substance of prayers.

The Obama administration is not alone in weighing in on the case. Attorneys general in 23 states, including Indiana and Texas, have also filed briefs urging the Supreme Court to uphold prayer in government meetings.

The movement to grant legal rights to fertilized eggs has seen its support dramatically collapse over the last few years, to the point where the most radically anti-choice states in the nation can’t pass bills in favor of it, or even get enough signatures to put the issue on ballots.

Personhood Ohio, however, has developed an ingenious plan to regain that support.

According to a Facebook posting by one of the group’s leaders, Dr. Patrick Johnston, the following message will be delivered to the phones of “55,000 pro-life Ohioans” this Friday.

This is Dr. Patrick Johnston, a family physician and the director of Personhood Ohio, and I’d love to put $5,000 cash in your hands for helping us protecting every baby under Ohio law! The failure of the Heartbeat Bill has shown us that the Ohio legislature will not do its duty and protect preborn Ohioans from death by abortion. Well, we can bypass the corrupt legislature and take it straight to the people by ballot initiative. Will you pray with us that every one of these babies will be protected? If you would like to help us save these children – and win $5,000 – please press 1 now to be directed to a Personhood Ohio volunteer, or visit Personhood Ohio – dot – com. Thank you so much and God bless you this New Year!

Even worse than being a lottery-style ploy for faux political support, the move is potentially a financial scam, too. Dr. Johnston’s last offer to give away $5,000 also offered not just one chance to enter his giveaway for every 25 petition signatures, but also an entry for every $25 donation to the cause and 10 chances for every $250 donation. All it would take is a couple of dozen “10 chances” donations to recoup the entire giveaway.

Still, Dr. Johnston seems undaunted in his quest to try to make a drastically unpopular idea look like it has grassroots support. So what happens if “personhood” somehow did make it onto the ballot, and win at the polls, but the Supreme Court dismisses the law anyway due to it being unconstitutional? That’s not a problem, either. Dr. Johnston believe the court can just be ignored. A November press release states:

What if the Ohio Personhood Amendment passes and the Supreme Court overturns it? Dr. Johnston responds, “Ohio would have no obligation to comply, but a duty to resist any attempt to slaughter innocent babies in Ohio. The federal government’s power is limited, by the Constitution and by the Creator. According to the U.S. Constitution, particularly Article X of the Bill of Rights, and according to Scripture, it is the God-delegated duty of civil authorities to protect the innocent through justice within their lawful jurisdiction.”

Buying political support and advocating rejection of federal law? Democracy at its finest.

The GOP will have you know that they get it. Your message from the 2012 election came through loud and clear. No more crazy, loud, publicly open anti-choice candidates.

The era of Akin is over.

According to Politico, a fight is brewing in the Republican party as they try to find a way to bridge the gap between the favored Washington candidates who tend to be more electable but allegedly moderate, and the grassroots Tea Party or social conservatives who excite the base. For 2014, they may try to take a more unified approach, Tea Party Senate Leader Jim DeMint told Politco.

However, it might not necessarily be a matter of going with a candidate who has less extreme views. Instead, they may just be looking for candidates who are better at hiding their radical views.

After watching the Akin and Mourdock implosions, some conservative leaders say better coaching is in order, too.

“We need to do a good job of recruiting; our candidates need more training, keep their foots out of their mouth,” DeMint told POLITICO. “There’s a reason why most politicians talk in sanitized sound bites: Once you get out of that, you’re opening yourself up to get attacked.”

As we learned in the 2012 election, Akin, Mourdock and others of their ilk aren’t the extreme wing of the party when it comes to reproductive rights. They are just more open about their views, and less couched in their language. Even the Politico piece has Republicans bemoaning the lost opportunity of having John Brunner or Sarah Steelman as the candidate, ignoring the fact that both Brunner and Steelman are just as adamantly opposed to abortion in cases as Akin was.

The difference? They didn’t talk about it as openly to the voters. For the GOP in 2014, that is the change they are looking for.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/11/19/republicans-learn-election-lesson-vow-no-more-akins/feed/0Denying Access to Contraception: What If Interfering With Women’s Lives Is The Point?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/09/30/what-interfering-with-womens-lives-is-point/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-interfering-with-womens-lives-is-point
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/09/30/what-interfering-with-womens-lives-is-point/#commentsSun, 30 Sep 2012 18:38:53 +0000A new Guttmacher Institute study shows that women use contraception to achieve economic and life goals, which runs up against conservatives who want to make this all about sex. But what if derailing women's goals is the entire point?

]]>The Guttmacher Institute has a new study out confirming what, until recently, I think many of us thought was an obvious point everyone understands: Women use contraception to manage their lives, achieve their life goals, and manage their economic realities. On this week’s podcast, I interview the study’s author Laura Lindberg, about their methodologies and the results, and I highly recommend checking that out. Considering the way that many right-wing pundits, from Rush Limbaugh to Bill O’Reilly, carry on about contraception like it’s only the province of out-of-control hedonists who wouldn’t know responsibility if it came in a neatly-labeled package, the interview is a breath of fresh air and common sense.

Of course, that means that in no way, shape, or form should we expect this important information to do anything to stop said right-wing pundits from raving like lunatics. For one thing, common sense and reason haven’t punctured their bubbles before, so there’s no real reason to think they’ll start listening to it now. The other reason is that even if they concede that women are using contraception so they can get an education and have a stable life before they have children (as well as control their family size after they have children), they’ll eventually come back around to what is really the issue here: Women are using contraception primarily to have sex.

Contraception is there so you can have sex while achieving your life goals, controlling your economic future, and maintaining your health. You can compare it to the process of taking a shower. If you were to ask me why I take showers, I’d probably look at you like you’re daft and say, “Well, to get clean.” I’d assume that it’s obvious why someone should want to be clean.

But if you kept pushing and asked me why I needed to be clean, I could probably come up with a bunch of good reasons for it: So that I can leave the house without offending people. So that I can hold down a job. For health reasons, because being grimy and dirty really isn’t good for you. So I can feel good about myself.

Now imagine if we lived in a society where a number of large and powerful religious groups believed that women’s nakedness was a sin, and therefore women should never disrobe, even for showers. On top of that, such a society would also have a group of men who aren’t particularly religious and who like to make dirty jokes about naked women, but who are easily whipped up into a frenzy of anger at the thought of all the women out there taking showers that they don’t get to see. And in this society, those men join up with the religious fanatics and demand that women be banned from using any showers that draw water from shared sources, such as any municipality.

Obviously, feminists would be outraged. But these religious groups and angry conservative pundits would insist they’re not banning showers. They just don’t see why they have to pay for a public service that serves women who do something they disagree with. Feminists would point out that the women who shower also pay their water bill, so they should get the same service as everyone else, but these folks would insist that since the water itself is drawn from a common pool, there’s no separation between the water they paid for and the water women are showering with, and they don’t want to have to violate their religious/cultural beliefs by paying for water that might touch naked lady skin. They would argue that women are free to dig their own wells and pull all the water they want out of the ground themselves, if they want, but they just don’t want to be part of all this sinful showering.

Feminists would then publish a bunch of studies showing that women need showers for things like holding jobs, running errands, and being pleasant around the house. These studies would have a lot of important functions. They would be wielded by politicians supporting “fair access” laws to showers. They would be used in court to protect against lawsuits from religious organizations demanding the right to kick women out of the water system. But most importantly, they would help demonstrate to the public at large how disingenuous these anti-shower people really are.

After all, the argument from the religious groups and conservative pundits would be, “We don’t hate women! We want women to be equal. We don’t mind if they hold down jobs and leave the house. If our religious beliefs somehow get in the way of that, it’s totally a coincidence and not our intention at all!”

Armed with these studies, however, we could point out how ridiculous they’re being. We’d be able to start getting the people who buy the claim that it’s just a religious rule guarding women’s chastity and instead get them to think about how the negative social effects may, in fact, be what they wanted all along. That perhaps keeping women dirty and ashamed and not able to leave the house is the point. That maybe they don’t want women to get jobs and get educated and be equal with men. That perhaps the anti-nudity weirdness and claims about their “right” not to share water with women who use it to shower is all a grand cover story for what is actually a larger-scale attack on women’s basic rights.

Which is all something to think about when anti-choicers invariably bring the conversation back to the claim that contraception is about “lifestyle choices” or “your sex life,” implying that this is simply about the sex part of the equation, and they have no intention of trying to muck things up for women outside of the bedroom. Is it really possible that they somehow believe that contraception is wrong without also supporting the negative side effects of depriving women of contraception? Or is keeping women from finishing their educations, holding down jobs, and living as equal to men the entire point?

Note: If the headline didn’t already clue you in, this is controversial subject matter. If you come away from this article thinking that I advocate genocide of a disabled population or the coercion of women pregnant with disabled fetuses into abortion, that I hate disabled people or think that Down syndrome people don’t deserve to live, you have failed to understand my point. Please walk away from the computer, breathe deeply, and start again from the beginning.

I believe that it is possible and desirable to respect disabled people while still working to eliminate genetic disorders so that children who might have had Down syndrome or cystic fibrosis (or any other disease) have a chance to be born without them. I believe that abortion of a disabled fetus can be a compassionate choice made for morally sound reasons, and does not at all conflict with the respect due to disabled people. I am firmly pro-choice, and I believe strongly that the wellbeing of all born persons in a family is paramount before considering the needs of a fetus. My position is that fetuses are incapable of being self-aware and therefore cannot experience suffering the way born persons do. The prevention of suffering is central to my moral beliefs.

If you’re already angry, please stop reading and go get yourself a nice cappuccino. Have a beautiful day. And then, if you still really want to read this, take frequent breaks to punch a pillow with a “hello, my name is Sierra” badge stuck to it.

Apparently, science can do something awesome: tell you the genome of your fetus within the second trimester:

Using a blood sample from the mother and saliva from the father, scientists at the University of Washington mapped out the entire genome of a child while he was in the womb. The discovery, which was published June 6 in Science Translational Medicine, makes it possible to spot disorders from sickle cell disease to cystic fibrosis to Down syndrome in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Best of all, at least for those of us who shiver at the thought of an amniocentesis, is that it’s noninvasive.

About 10 percent of the free-floating in a mother’s blood belongs to her baby, and by comparing her blood with her own and the father’s DNA, scientists can pinpoint which DNA belongs to the baby. From there, they can sequence the child’s entire DNA code. Or at least, they can get pretty close. Their accuracy rate was about 98 percent in the infant boy they tested.

Zylstra says that, “at first blush,” this information looks “incredible.” Yes, it does. Because it is. This kind of technology gives us more control over our own reproduction, which means that we’re better able to make ethical decisions about our parenting. As Zylstra points out, parents who are expecting a special needs child can prepare in advance for what that means.

But there’s a catch, says Zylstra:

You can be emotionally prepared for his birth. You could choose a C-section if that was warranted, or line up services for him, or join a support group.Or abort him.That’s the rub, said Gene Rudd, president of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations.

It’s hard to imagine this test wouldn’t be the instigation of selective abortions, since many women with prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome currently abort, he said. “It’s search and destroy that we do that now with Downs,” he said. “And to what benefit do we do that? If we look at the statistics or surveys that come from families that have raised a Downs individual, 97 percent said it was rewarding.”

It’s a life worth living, and many see that, says Amy Julia Becker, who has written extensively about her daughter with Down syndrome. Heart conditions and respiratory troubles often suffered by those with Down syndrome can be treated, life expectancy has risen from 25 to 60, and by all accounts, raising a son or daughter with Down syndrome can be a wonderful gift. The numbers are tricky, but Becker says that about 70 percent of babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.

“Ultimately, the problem is that we have a society that says it’s okay to kill unborn babies,” Rudd told me. “If that weren’t permissible, this information wouldn’t be misused.” Prenatal testing in a country with legal abortion lets parents decide if that child is “good enough” to live, he said. But as imperfect, capricious, sinful beings, how do we figure we’re smart enough, or good enough, to judge anybody else’s shot at life?

“Who are we to say that cystic fibrosis is such an overwhelmingly terrible disease that they shouldn’t be allowed to live?” Rudd said. “Do we say that about a one-year-old who is diagnosed? What’s different about a younger child?”

There are a lot of pieces to this pie, so I’m going to address them problem-by-problem. Ready? Here we go. This article:

Fetishizes disability.

Dehumanizes children.

Downplays economic concerns and long-term viability.

Minimizes the suffering of children and caregivers.

Is logically inconsistent.

Conflates fetuses with born children, and therefore

Devalues labor, delivery and motherhood.

Before we go any farther, here is my main point:

Having an abortion to prevent a child from being born with Down syndrome or another disability can be a positive moral choice. Okay, now let’s go on (assuming you’re not already plotting my demise).

1. Fetishizing disability

The disability rights movement is hugely important and I support it. It’s especially vital for individuals with mental illnesses, who are often judged as “not really disabled” because there’s nothing visibly wrong with them. Disabled people have a long history of being medically abused, used as test subjects without consent, being abandoned or forced to live in squalor, and being generally reviled, disrespected and treated like freaks. We need a movement to rectify that and prevent it from ever happening again. I’m glad we have one.

Now. Here’s where I depart from Zylstra and other activists.

Respecting the rights of disabled people does not mean honoring or celebrating disability itself. Apart from the perspective and political activism that many disabled people have found via their experiences as a discriminated-against class, I’d wager most people who are disabled would rather not be. Just like poor people value their wisdom but would really rather not be poor. I’ve been a poor kid. I’m still pretty poor. I’ve learned a hell of a lot about empathy from being poor. But would I choose to be poor? No. Would I want others to be poor kids? No. Would I jump at the chance to end poverty once and for all? Yes! I want people to listen to what I’ve learned, but I don’t want them all to have to learn it the hard way, like I did. I would wager that at least some disabled people feel the same.

When you argue that children with Down syndrome are “special gifts” or that raising them is a “rewarding experience” for parents, you are appropriating their difficulties and fetishizing their difference. That is the opposite of respecting a disabled person. I get that who we are is shaped by experience and that many disabled people consider disability to be integral to their personalities – just as I see poverty as a formative experience for me – but I doubt they would have chosen to be disabled in the first place. Would they have voluntarily given up able bodies for the wisdom earned from being disabled? Would they refuse treatment, if it were available? Would they choose to suffer disabilities just so that their parents could have the “reward” and “special gift” of raising them?

I hate the thought that there will be fewer people with Down syndrome in the world as a result of advances in prenatal testing. As I’ve written before, it impoverishes us all when we selectively abort babies based upon particular characteristics (gender, for instance, in China and India… disabilities here in America).

I understand this argument. I do. I get how parents of Downs children learn from their experiences and love their children fiercely and imagine how empty and cold the world would be without children like theirs. But this line of reasoning makes me profoundly uncomfortable. By all means, love your child! By all means, share your hard-earned wisdom! But to wish for Down syndrome to never go away? to never be cured? Why would you wish that?

I can’t help but think that it’s not about the children’s quality of life (wouldn’t you choose a life for your child that didn’t include Downs, if you could?) but about the parents’ inability to distinguish between their love for their kids and the condition from which their kids suffer. By all means, celebrate your child and his or her wonderful uniqueness! (I say this without irony.) But don’t reduce your child to the mere fact of having Downs, as though having Downs makes them a kind of endangered species and that Down syndrome must continueforever because kids like yours would never exist again without it. Your child would be special, you would have that bond, with or without Downs.

Wanting to eradicate a condition that causes suffering or dependence in a population is not the same as wanting that population to die. Imagine for a moment that we’re not talking about abortion. If it were possible to “cure” Down syndrome prenatally, preserving the same fetus, would you deny your child the treatment because you’d hate to see fewer Down syndrome children in the world?

Which brings me to #2.

2. Dehumanizing children

Focusing on the “rewards” to parents of raising a special needs child means privileging parents’ personal growth over the best interests of their potential child. If parents choose to bring into this world a child that cannot be reasonably expected to care for himself as an adult, they are gambling with their child’s future. Who will care for him or her when the parents are gone? Do they have the resources to provide for their child’s medical needs? Do they have other children who would be neglected because of their parents’ intense focus on caring for the special needs child?

Now, I understand that many, many Downs people are able to function in the world without immediate care, but others can’t. I think it’s awfully brazen and selfish not to consider one’s potential child’s quality of life for the entire duration of that child’s life before deciding what to do. I think it’s necessary to ask tough questions of yourself, to honestly answer the question of whether or not you can provide that child with everything he or she will need for life.

Special needs children aren’t high-maintenance pets that exist to teach you lessons about fortitude and compassion. They are people. And it’s because a special needs fetus will become a person at birth that abortion should be on the table. Responsible, moral reproductive choices involve doing the hard math and yes, making decisions to either give your child the best possible long, independent life or to terminate the pregnancy early if you know you can’t.

Clinging to a soundbyte belief system that makes your decisions for you (“Abortion is murder!”) or abdicating responsibility (“God will provide as long as I don’t get an abortion!”) means shirking your fundamental duty as a parent: to make decisions with your child’s best interests at heart until your child can do so herself. That responsibility may lead you to give birth to and raise a disabled child – and more power to you! – as long as you’re doing it with your eyes open and taking every possible precaution to make sure you can deliver on the promise of care you are making your newborn child. But it may also mean having an abortion.

It intrigues me that religious people, the ones who are the first to point out the flaws and fallen nature of the world, are the last to acknowledge the result: that horrible things happen, and those situations require hard decisions. Birth defects and excruciating diseases happen. To refuse to act to minimize suffering (indeed, to prevent it) is at best selfish and at worst abusive. To pretend that there is always a perfect answer to a problem in this imperfect world is to effectively close your eyes and live in your own imagination.

3. Classism

Not every family can afford the medical care of a special needs child. Not every family can afford the time spent caring for a special needs child, especially if they already have multiple children. To demand that families that know they lack these resources nonetheless give up everything to bring a child into a world where it will be neglected, inadequately treated by doctors, and in all likelihood end up in foster care or, as an adult, homeless, is cruelly insane. To focus on mere “life” to the exclusion of the quality thereof is not just stupid, it’s evil. It is deliberately inflicting suffering on others to soothe your own conscience.

(Though, given that the estimate was made in the context of a lawsuit, it’s probably a little on the high side.)

4. Minimizing the Needs of Others

Parents and caregivers are people, too. They do not forfeit their own needs when they have children; indeed, doing so is actually harmful to children. Recall the many times I’ve said that having a stay-at-home mother made me feel hopeless and guilty about becoming a woman. I was put in the impossible position of either following in her footsteps, thereby ensuring that every female in our line would do nothing but sacrifice for her children and never get to have her own dreams, or not following in her footsteps and feeling guilty that I was (a) rejecting her by rejecting her lifestyle and (b) doing my own potential children some kind of injustice, even though I didn’t want my children facing the quandary I was! I wished my mother had more of a life outside of raising me, because then I would be freer to have a life, too.

If parents choose to welcome a special needs child into their family, they must consider how it will affect not only that child, but also themselves and their other children. They must make room for breaks and self-care to preserve their own health, mental and physical. In my own church, there was a woman with two children who got pregnant and found out her child had a fatal defect. She decided against having an abortion, believing that God would honor her and heal her child (or at least provide for it). The child lived 13 years in unspeakable pain, without cognition, undergoing surgery after surgery until she died – and by this time the family had exhausted its resources, the other two children had been practically abandoned. The mother had worked herself to the bone, endured a failed promise from God, and had to mourn the child all over again at the end of it all. That child was not a “blessing.” It was not a “rewarding” experience – though the mother might tell you so out of sheer love and the need to justify her situation. The child’s birth destroyed her family, and she was never even aware enough of her own existence to realize she was loved. How is that the hand of God?

5. Logical Inconsistency

First, we get the argument that raising a special needs child is a blessing:

[Says Rudd:] “If we look at the statistics or surveys that come from families that have raised a Downs individual, 97 percent said it was rewarding.”

That is abhorrent abuse of statistics. First, your entire sample (people who have chosen not to abort) is already biased toward the belief that what they’re doing is rewarding. Where are the surveys for women who chose to abort Downs fetuses? You’re comparing this 97 percent to an empty page. They might say that their abortion was a blessing, but you can’t print that, can you? Not on a Christian blog.

Second, the parenting discourse in Western culture is so punitive that parents of “typical” children aren’t even free to express that they dislike the drudgery of parenting without being accused of being sociopaths and hating their kids. That’s why such statements as “I hate being a mom” show up anonymously on Secret Confessions and have been called the Greatest American Taboo. How much more pressure is there on parents of special needs kids never to admit that they wish they weren’t?

Then, we get this:

“Who are we to say that cystic fibrosis is such an overwhelmingly terrible disease that they shouldn’t be allowed to live?” Rudd said. “Do we say that about a one-year-old who is diagnosed? What’s different about a younger child?”

Little is different about a younger child. Everything is different about a fetus. A fetus does not have cognition. A fetus lives inside a woman’s body. A fetus has never drawn a breath. A fetus has not lived a life to miss.Those are significant differences.

Also, when did we go from talking about the relative independence of some Downs individuals to the horrible suffering inflicted by cystic fibrosis? Read this description and see if you think it’s an apt comparison:

Cystic fibrosis is a disease passed down through families that causes thick, sticky mucus to build up in the lungs, digestive tract, and other areas of the body. It is one of the most common chronic lung diseases in children and young adults. It is a life-threatening disorder. Lung disease eventually worsens to the point where the person is disabled. Today, the average life span for people with CF who live to adulthood is approximately 37 years, a dramatic increase over the last three decades. Death is usually caused by lung complications.

Would you utter a sentence like this?: I hate the thought that there will be fewer people with cystic fibrosis in the world as a result of advances in prenatal testing. Would you tell parents how “rewarding” it is to raise a child with cystic fibrosis? Who are we to say that the disease is overwhelmingly terrible? Rudd asks. Well, here’s who we are: Caring parents. Compassionate, educated doctors. People who don’t want to inflict unnecessary suffering by bringing a not-yet-conscious fetus into the world to experience a waking nightmare and die, choking or suffocating, at half the normal life expectancy. That’s who.

There’s also the little problem that the article jumps back and forth between arguing about the intrinsic worth of life and the rewards of being a caregiver. These two competing perspectives make the argument hard to follow.

6 + 7. Erasing Motherhood

It’s a common trope of the pro-life movement that “a moment before birth” a fetus is a baby, and therefore abortion is the same as infanticide. This is not only scientifically inaccurate, it’s misogynistic. It erases the woman, her wellbeing, and her labor from the entire equation. Childbirth is momentous. It matters. It is not just a legal flagpole where personhood is arbitrarily assigned. It is the moment at which a child begins to occupy the world as an independent being.

It is also a moment made possible by the bodily work (pain, sweat, blood and tears) of a woman. If we grew children in plastic incubators with green fluid and Classical music playing gently in the background, then the “moment before birth” comparison might be apt. But it isn’t, because children live in their own bodies, and fetuses live in their mothers’. While that fetus is in its mother’s body, she does have sovereignty over the decision whether or not to bring the child into the world. That is her sacred right as a mother. It is her sacred right as a woman not to have her body violated against her will – be it by another adult, a child or a fetus. Alone, a fetus cannot be brought into the world to become a baby. Therefore, you can’t talk about a fetus as though it exists without regard for the woman upon whom its existence depends. To alienate the pregnant woman from a discussion about pregnancy is like having a conversation about the weather on an asteroid.

Zylstra concludes her article:

It’s not that the test is bad. To be able to map a child’s DNA while they’re still in the womb is fascinating. But so is the fact that many mothers believe that it would be worse to live in an imperfect body than not to live at all.

There’s a huge problem here. Cystic fibrosis is a serious disease. Downs syndrome can be serious. Genetic diseases can leave children’s independence stalled, their mobility hampered, their bodies aching, their minds wracked with torturous bouts of depression and anger, their futures uncertain and their families stressed to the breaking point. This isn’t about perfect and imperfect bodies. This is not the difference between passing on genes correlated with overweight and comparing your potential child to fitness models. The perfect/imperfect body dichotomy is a red herring. No body is perfect. It’s disingenuous and manipulative to assert that having a serious genetic disorder is equivalent to having a few pimples and a crooked nose.

If I somehow (metaphysics be damned!) had a choice to be born in a body that would slowly disintegrate on me, like that of Stephen Hawking, or not to be born at all, I’d pick the latter. This does not mean that I think Stephen Hawking shouldn’t be alive. He is a great scientist. He has done marvelous things with his life. But that does not make the pain and horror of his situation any less. If I could prevent my own child from being born into a life like that, I would. I consider it my moral imperative. And if Stephen Hawking and I were hanging out in the metaphysical waiting room before descending to earth, and he told me he didn’t want to be born into all that suffering, it would be unfathomably selfish of me to demand that he endure what he has endured just so that I (and other healthful people) could benefit from his mind.

My Points:

If you made it this far, congratulations. Here’s the rundown:

Respect disabled people for their personhood, but don’t promote the continued existence of disabilities. That doesn’t do anyone any favors.

Don’t treat disabled children as special projects to improve their parents’ character.

Don’t act like everybody can afford to live by your conscience.

Don’t prioritize the wellbeing of a fetus over the entire family.

Don’t force special needs children into families that don’t want them, and will abuse, neglect or abandon them. They have it hard enough in families that want them and have the resources to care for them.

Don’t conflate serious disorders with minor imperfections to guilt parents into a choice to raise a child they don’t want to have.

Don’t abuse statistics to lie about the satisfaction rate of parents with special needs children.

Don’t minimize the labor of mothers or pretend that you can talk about fetuses without women.

It is possible to choose abortion based on a positive screening for genetic disorders because you are morally opposed to inflicting suffering on others. It is possible that women who abort fetuses with Down syndrome or more series disorders do it not because they hate Downs people or like genocide or are Selfish Career Bitches(TM), but because they honestly believe it’s what’s best for their families. The anti-abortion crowd is not the only one with a flagpole stuck in the moral high ground.

Now, finally, a thought experiment.

Why is it a “blessing” and a “rewarding” experience to raise a child with Down syndrome, but not one with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? If there’s something inherently valuable about disabilities themselves that improves the lives of people who have them and whose loved ones have them, why does the origin of the disability make such a difference? Why is taking every precaution to avoid FAS, to the point of making pregnant women neurotic, a worthwhile societal goal? Why does no one hate to imagine a world in which there are no children with FAS?

I suspect the answer has something to do with control. Because if you can control an outcome (or at least think you can), people will be justified in blaming you for an adverse outcome. But if you can’t prevent suffering (or think you can’t), your reputation remains untarnished. If you see suffering in your future and evade it, those who are suffering will attack you for your selfishness and arrogance. (“How dare you have it so easy?”) But is that feeling of moral superiority actually moral superiority? I don’t think so. It sounds more like a cry of pain at the unfairness of the world – which is something we should be trying to fix, not perpetuate.

Sierra is a PhD student living in the Midwest. She was raised in a “Message of the Hour” congregation that followed the ministry of William Branham. She left the Message in 2006 and is the author of the blog The Phoenix and the Olive Branch.

Weekly global roundup: Reproductive Health Bill still looms as a promise in the Philippines; the UN hears testimony of rape in Syria; US Christian Right camps out in Africa; Abortion ban in the Dominican Republic impedes a teen's cancer treatment.

Philippines: Catholic Church vs. Reality When it Comes to Contraception

The LA Times has a series, “Beyond the Billion,” which explores population issues worldwide. This week, the long suffering Reproductive Health Bill in the Philippines, and the country’s embittered struggle to provide for its citizens’ reproductive health needs is again in the spotlight. The bill, which would provide universal access to sex education and unfettered access to contraception remains in Congress after nearly 15 years under review, and advocates are pushing hard against the stalwart Catholic leadership that largely runs the country. Yet increasingly so, it has become clear just how at odds – and out of touch – the Catholic Church is with the needs and desires of Filipinos. Advocates are hopeful that this dissonance will soon lead to a sea change in policies for the country. In 2010, President Aquino was elected in part because of his outspoken support for the bill, after decades of his outspoken opposition to it – including an executive order banning modern contraception in the capital of Manila. Eighty percent of the population is Catholic, and 70 percent support the Reproductive Health Bill. Lack of access to contraception has contributed to the poverty and ill health of the population, and continues to oppress the human rights of individuals countrywide. Abortion is also entirely restricted in the country, putting women and families in excruciating positions when it comes to determining their fertility, health, and futures. Congress has pledged to vote on the bill within the year. Via The LA Times.

Syria: Crowd-Sourced Rape Findings Presented at the United Nations

Last week, Lauren Wolfe, Director of Women Under Siege – a media and human rights watchdog focused on sexualized violence worldwide – testified at the UN on the use of rape in Syria as a weapon of war. Women Under Siege launched the crowd-sourced map to track instances of sexual violence in the country back in April, utilizing technology to uncover a real-time and evolving picture of the reality of sexual violence. The map is accessible by survivors and witnesses, and tracks where sexual violence is occurring, as well as other details such as how many people were involved and what the outcomes were. Three months later, Wolfe says:

“The major finding of our work is that Syrian government forces have allegedly carried out nearly 70 percent of sexual attacks in the country.”

Wolfe also says the map shows an alarmingly high rate of gang rape. The significance of Wolfe’s testimony and the existence of the map’s data is the probability to stem and address sexual violence as close to the time it occurs as possible. This is a major opportunity for human rights advocates and peacekeepers to challenge what has for too long been the status quo in conflict and crisis settings – that women are subjected to brutal sexual violence with little to no recourse. Let’s hope it doesn’t drift away in vain. Via Women Under Siege.

Africa Continent: US Religious Right Puppeteers Anti-Gay and Anti-Choice Policies

Political Research Associates of Boston, a progressive think tank, has released a report, Colonizing Africa Values: How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa, which details efforts of the Right to infiltrate and “strongly mentor” African religious leaders around specific policy objectives, namely anti-gay and anti-choice. It is no surprise that there’s a strong link between such efforts in the United States and in Africa, as evinced by American Evangelicals’ role in building Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill, or notorious anti-choice Rep. Chris Smith’s African adventures. But the report details a broader and subtler linkage, which may be more difficult to track and ascertain. The report’s key author, Reverend Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican Priest from Zambia, describes U.S. Christian Right “store fronts,” staffed by African employees, largely to appeal to a new demographic. Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), the Catholic Church’s Human Life International (HLI) and the Mormon-led Family Watch International are all names as having launched or expanded offices in Africa over the past five years.

“By hiring locals as office staff, ACLJ and HLI in particular hide an American-based agenda behind African faces, giving the Christian Right room to attack gender justice and (the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people) as a neocolonial enterprise imposed on Africans and obstructing meaningful critique of the U.S. right’s activities,” the report said. Via AP.

A constitutional ban on abortion in the Dominican Republic has led to a raging debate over the health and life of a 16-year old with acute Leukemia, who also happens to be nine weeks pregnant. The young woman needs chemotherapy to save her life, but which would likely result in the termination of her pregnancy. Doctors are unsure of what to do amid speculation of the implications of the country’s law, which is mostly applied as an all-out ban on abortion. Article 37 of the Dominican Constitution states that “the right to life is inviolable from the moment of conception and until death,” prohibiting abortion in all circumstances, and also outlawing the death penalty. Interpretation of the article has remained sketchy, inhibiting the exercise of reproductive rights countrywide. Hopefully cancer treatment will commence soon, and a richer debate about how to interpret this component of the constitution to protect the rights of women will commence as well. Via CNN International.

When I moved to Canada in 2008, I was a die-hard conservative Republican. So when I found out that we were going to be covered by Canada’s Universal Health Care, I was somewhat disgusted. This meant we couldn’t choose our own health coverage, or even opt out if we wanted too. It also meant that abortion was covered by our taxes, something I had always believed was horrible. I believed based on my politics that government mandated health care was a violation of my freedom.

When I got pregnant shortly after moving, I was apprehensive. Would I even be able to have a home birth like I had experienced with my first 2 babies? Universal Health Care meant less choice right? So I would be forced to do whatever the medical system dictated regardless of my feelings, because of the government mandate. I even talked some of having my baby across the border in the US, where I could pay out of pocket for whatever birth I wanted. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that midwives were not only covered by the Universal health care, they were encouraged! Even for hospital births. In Canada, midwives and doctors were both respected, and often worked together.

I went to my first midwife appointment and sat in the waiting room looking at the wall of informational pamphlets. I never went to the doctor growing up, we didn’t have health insurance, and my parents preferred a conservative naturopathic doctor anyways. And the doctor I had used for my first 2 births was also a conservative Christian. So I had never seen information on birth control and STDs. One of the pamphlets read “Pregnant Unexpectedly?” so I picked it up, wondering what it would say. The pamphlet talked about adoption, parenthood, or abortion. It went through the basics of what each option would entail and ended by saying that these choices were up to you. I was horrified that they included abortion on the list of options, and the fact that the pamphlet was so balanced instead of “pro-life.”

During my appointment that day, the midwife asked her initial round of questions including whether or not I had desired to become pregnant in the first place. Looking back I am not surprised she asked that, I was depressed at the time, (even though I did not list that on my medical chart) and very vocal about my views on birth control (it wasn’t OK, ever.) No wonder she felt like she should ask if I was happy to be having this baby. But I was angry about the whole thing. In my mind, freedom was being violated, my rights were being decided for me by the evils of Universal Health Care.

Fast forward a little past the Canadian births of my third and fourth babies. I had better prenatal care than I had ever had in the States. I came in regularly for appointments to check on my health and my babies’ health throughout my pregnancy, and I never had to worry about how much a test cost or how much the blood draw fee was. With my pregnancies in the States, I had limited my checkups to only a handful to keep costs down. When I went in to get the shot I needed because of my negative blood type, it was covered. In fact I got the recommended 2 doses instead of the more risky 1 dose because I didn’t have to worry about the expense. I had a wide array of options and flexibility when it came to my birth, and care providers that were more concerned with my health and the health of my baby than how much money they might make based on my birth, or what might impact their reputation best. When health care is universal, Drs are free to recommend and provide the best care for every patient instead of basing their care on what each patient can afford.

I found out that religious rights were still respected. The Catholic hospital in the area did not provide abortions, and they were not required too. I had an amazing medically safe birth, and excellent post-natal care with midwives who had to be trained, certified and approved by the medical system.

I started to feel differently about Universal government mandated and regulated Health care. I realized how many times my family had avoided hospital care because of our lack of coverage. When I mentioned to Canadians that I had been in a car accident as a teen and hadn’t gone into the hospital, they were shocked! Here, you always went to the hospital, just in case. And the back issue I had since the accident would have been helped by prescribed chiropractic care which would have been at no cost to me. When I asked for prayers for my little brother who had been burned in a camping accident, they were all puzzled why the story did not include immediately rushing him to the hospital. When they asked me to clarify and I explained that many people in the States are not insured and they try to put off medical care unless absolutely needed, they literally could not comprehend such a thing.

I started to wonder why I had been so opposed to government mandated Universal Health care. Here in Canada, everyone was covered. If they worked full-time, if they worked part-time, or if they were homeless and lived on the street, they were all entitled to the same level of care if they had a medical need. People actually went in for routine check-ups and caught many of their illnesses early, before they were too advanced to treat. People were free to quit a job they hated, or even start their own business without fear of losing their medical coverage. In fact, the only real complaint I heard about the universal health care from the Canadians themselves, was that sometimes there could be a wait time before a particular medical service could be provided. But even that didn’t seem to be that bad to me, in the States most people had to wait for medical care, or even be denied based on their coverage. The only people guaranteed immediate and full service in the USA, were those with the best (and most expensive) health coverage or wads of cash they could blow. In Canada, the wait times were usually short, and applied to everyone regardless of wealth. If you were discontent with the wait time (and had the money to cover it) you could always travel out of the country to someplace where you could demand a particular service for a price. Personally, I never experienced excessive wait times, I was accepted for maternity care within a few days or weeks, I was able to find a family care provider nearby easily and quickly, and when a child needed to be brought in for a health concern I was always able to get an appointment within that week.

If she was informed that she had a special needs baby on the way, she could rest assured knowing in Canada her child’s health care needs would be covered. Whether your child needs therapy, medicines, a caregiver, a wheelchair, or repeated surgeries, it would be covered by the health care system. Here, you never heard of parents joining the army just so their child’s “pre-existing” health care needs would be covered. In fact, when a special needs person becomes an adult in Canada, they are eligible for a personal care assistant covered by the government. We saw far more developmentally or physically disabled persons out and about in Canada, than I ever see here in the USA. They would be getting their groceries at the store, doing their business at the bank, and even working job, all with their personal care assistant alongside them, encouraging them and helping them when they needed it. When my sister came up to visit, she even commented on how visible special needs people were when the lady smiling and waving while clearing tables at the Taco Bell with her caregiver clearly had Downs Syndrome.

I also discovered that the Canadian government looked out for it’s families in other ways. The country mandates one year of paid maternity leave, meaning a woman having a baby gets an entire year after the birth of her baby to recover and parent her new baby full-time, while still receiving 55% of her salary and their job back at the end of that year. Either parent can use the leave, so some split it, with one parent staying at home for 6 months and the other staying at home for 6 months. I could hardly believe my ears when I first heard it. In America, women routinely had to return to work after 6 weeks leave, many times unpaid. Many American women lost their jobs when becoming pregnant or having a baby. I knew people who had to go back to work 2 weeks after giving birth just to hang onto their job and continue making enough money to pay the bills. Also every child in Canada gets a monthly cash tax benefit. The wealthier families can put theirs into a savings account to pay for college someday (which also costs far less money in Canada by the way), the not so wealthy can use theirs to buy that car seat or even groceries. In the province we lived in, we also received a monthly day care supplement check for every child under school age. I made more money being a stay at home mom in Canada than I do in the States working a close to a minimum wage job. And none of the things I listed here are considered “welfare” they are available to every Canadian regardless of income. For those with lower incomes than we had there are other supports in place as well.

If a woman gets pregnant unexpectedly in America, she has to worry about how she will get her own prenatal care, medical care for her child, whether or not she will be able to keep her job and how she will pay for daycare for her child so she can continue to support her family. In Canada those problems are eliminated or at least reduced. Where do you think a woman is more likely to feel supported in her decision to keep her baby, and therefore reduce abortions?

Since all of these benefits are available to everyone, I never heard Canadians talking about capping their incomes to remain lower income and not lose their government provided health coverage. Older people in Canada don’t have to clean out their assets to qualify for some Medicare or Social Security programs, I heard of inheritances being left even amongst the middle classes. Something I had only heard about in wealthy families in the USA.

And lest you think that the Canada system is draining the government resources, their budget is very close to balanced every year. They’ve had these programs for decades. Last year Canada’s national debt was 586 billion dollars, the USA has 15.5 trillion dollars in national debt. Canada has about one 10th the population of the US, so even accounting for size, the USA is almost 3 times more indebted. And lest you think that taxes are astronomical, our median income taxes each year were only slightly higher than they had been in the States, and we still got a large chunk of it back each year at tax time.

In the end, I don’t see Universal health care as an evil thing anymore. Comparing the two systems, which one better values the life of each person? Which system is truly more family friendly?

“Damnit!” God muttered as he paced the floor of His heavenly office. “After all I have done, they are never going to grow up and leave home!”

“Maybe you went a little too far,” the Holy Spirit said, rolling her eyes. “Why would they want to go? After all, it’s Paradise. And maybe you went overboard giving him everything to rule—telling him he is in your likeness—and then that Eve thing.”

“I know you disagreed with that. But even when he was Master of Everything he still seemed kind of lost—like a little boy. It was as if he was incomplete. I had to do something to boost him up,” God said, sighing.

“But telling him you made her out of him instead of from me! I’m afraid he’s never going to treat her like an equal. How many times has he already said to her—“Well Eve, after all, you are just a part of me.” It’s disgusting. It’s as though he thinks he’s God!

“Oh H.S., I know you’re right. But I don’t know what to do about it. If he could just grow up and have to face the realities of life. I counted on the idea that he would rebel by now—that’s why I told him about the trees that were off limits. But he’s so righteous. All he did was build a fence around them and put up a No Trespassing sign. Where’s his sense of adventure?”

“Boss, you know he’d be happy going fishing every day. There is only one chance if you really want human beings to grow up. You’re going to have to get her to help,” Spirit said. “Otherwise you are going to have them living in your back yard until the End of Time.”

“But how can I do that? If he knows that I’ve chosen her as the hope for humanity he’ll never get over it,” God said.

“But surely he will remember that you are in charge of whatever happens—so there won’t be anyone to blame no matter how you do it,” the Holy Spirit said encouragingly.

God furrowed His brow. “Will you ask her to meet with me?”

God and Eve

“Thanks for coming, Eve. How is everything going?”

“Not too bad,” she answered, “considering.”

God smiled sheepishly, “Listen, I know you aren’t too happy with me lying to Adam about how you were created.”

“That rib story has made him insufferable. He goes around chuckling about my inferiority; telling me what to do; naming things; looking for someone to fight; and peeing to mark his territory, which is everywhere. I just wish you hadn’t asked me to keep it a secret that I was created from the Holy Spirit.”

“I’m sorry about that. Don’t worry. I’m going to completely erase from your memory the fact that you were created from the Divine Feminine.”

“That’s not fair! Why not just tell him the truth and even things out between us?” Eve exclaimed.

“I just don’t think he can take it. Let’s give him a little time to grow out of this narcissistic phase. But at least if you don’t remember that you are as divine as he is you won’t be so frustrated.”

“Maybe that will make it easier to take. But I still won’t appreciate the way he treats me.”

“His first wife, Lilith, had the same complaint. But I didn’t want him to be alone. When she left I tried again with you. I thought that being part of the Holy Spirit might give you the patience to deal with him.”

“I’d say I have more patience than he deserves. I like Adam well enough—I mean he’s a nice guy. We just don’t have much in common.”

“I understand. But you know I just can’t stay mad at him,” God smiled.

“I’ve noticed. What did you want to talk about anyway?”

“I need to get you humans to get out of this garden so you can start begetting the human race.”

“I have been telling Adam for months that it doesn’t work to live with in-laws. But I can’t get him to listen. He’s really happy here.”

“The truth is that I was counting on a little teen aged rebellion by now—you know, detaching from the parent? But that’s not happening so I have been trying to figure out another way to get you two out of Paradise. Remember those trees I told Adam not to touch?”

“Omigod, he tells me every day! Don’t eat that fruit. And he has even gone so far as to…”

“…put up fences, I know,” God said.

“I don’t mean to complain, but it is getting a little boring around here. I want to make a difference in the world. There’s nothing for me to do,” Eve moaned.

“I think I can change that. I’ve got a plan. How do you feel about snakes?”